Hunter Walker

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

In some ways it’s ALWAYS to an investor’s benefit to suggest a potential new investment wouldn’t be competitive to an existing portfolio company, and it’s ALWAYS to the current portfolio company’s benefit to suggest it might be. Why do I care about how investors at other firms get paid? So what’s a founder to do?

Early Stage 114

Early Stage Cofounder Vertical Portfolio 114

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 1, 2021

ICAS® can then be scaled up across the customer’s portfolio bringing enterprise-wide benefits. She’s also our lead investor interface, and great at articulating our vision to investors and partners alike. TSM: What are the disruptive factors in the construction industry that make your business efforts so promising?

Technical Review 110

Technical Review Founder Saudi Arabia Cofounder 110

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

It’s a super important, near permanent relationship, especially for a lead investor that is likely to take a board seat for many years. First, unlike in dating, a VC is already an investor in multiple companies when they are considering an investment in a new startup. This is true. But in my experience, the metaphor ends there.

Founder 280

Founder Lead Investor Portfolio Reputation 280

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Her work included heading Nokia’s location-based services business and app portfolio for emerging markets, which she built from a back-of-a-napkin idea to a 100-person organization with over 10 million users. Entrepreneurs today expect more than just capital from their investors. Some corporate funds now lead rounds.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

We were co-lead investors in Grove’s seed round and actually doubled down in an intermediate round prior to this challenging series A process. When I think of all the value drivers in our portfolio, every single one faced at least one if not several crucible moments like this.

Founder 153

Founder Cofounder Seed Stage Portfolio 153

Lightspeed Venture Partners

APRIL 12, 2016

Some of the better known companies in our consumer portfolio include Affirm, Bonobos, DianPing, Giphy, Grubhub, Nest, OutBrain, Oyo Rooms, Playdom, Snapchat, Stitchfix, Nest, Grubhub, TaskRabbit and The Honest Company. His full time job is CEO of Cheddar , the OTT video company he founded, and where Lightspeed is the lead investor.

Technical Cofounder 60

Technical Cofounder Cofounder SCRUM Committed Capital 60

View from Seed

AUGUST 26, 2015

Overall, I’d recommend being pretty prolific (5-10 investments a year), writing reasonably small checks at first, and thinking of your investments in 18-36 month cohorts of companies or mini portfolios. Favor investment rounds with strong leads that haven’t raised millions of dollars before you. Just a few pointers.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Angel Investor Software Review Silicon Valley 120

View from Seed

AUGUST 26, 2015

Overall, I’d recommend being pretty prolific (5-10 investments a year), writing reasonably small checks at first, and thinking of your investments in 18-36 month cohorts of companies or mini portfolios. Favor investment rounds with strong leads that haven’t raised millions of dollars before you. Just a few pointers.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Angel Investor Software Review Silicon Valley 120

Hunter Walker

DECEMBER 30, 2022

There’s also many wonderful angel/operators and smaller supporting funds with large portfolio strategies. Not for competitive reasons (I don’t believe) but because they are primarily trying to help a startup find a lead investor, and we used to be that for them, but now rarely lead seed rounds.

Cap Table 67

Cap Table Venture Capital Cofounder Portfolio 67

ReadWriteStart

JULY 18, 2011

Jeff Clavier was the first tech investor I ever met; he was introduced to me years ago by some hip engineers in a bar as "one of the few cool VCs." How many seed investors should you take money from? Typically 5 to 15, with a strong lead investor with relevant expertise, passion, time to work with you and a great rolodex.

Investment Bankers 153

Investment Bankers Technical Review Cofounder Due Diligence 153

David Teten

FEBRUARY 3, 2014

Similarly, my research on venture capital portfolio operations found that Portfolio Operator VCs such as Andreesen Horowitz , First Round Capital , ff Venture Capital , and Google Ventures are hiring unusually large teams and structuring them in traditional pyramids. Notes: Only for IT & related sectors.

Private Equity 114

Private Equity Venture Capital Technical Review Equity 114

Rob Go

JANUARY 9, 2012

A year ago, I wrote a post detailing some tidbits about our portfolio. I believe that the best way to understand an investor is to meet the founders that they work with. Second best is to understand their portfolio. So here is an unscientific cut of our portfolio and some commentary below.

Portfolio 46

Portfolio Syndicate Syndication Cofounder 46

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

I’ve written on the expert network industry a fair amount in the past: see How to Earn More Consulting Revenue from Expert Networks and How Executives Can Work with Private Equity and Venture Capital Portfolio Companies. Prabhdeep Singh: GLG Share works in concert with the startup’s investors and VCs however we can.

New York 114

New York Technical Review Networking Advisory Board 114

David Teten

JANUARY 10, 2012

He is an active angel with many successful angel investments including: Rent.com, (purchased by Ebay in 2005 for $415 million), Golfnow.com (purchased by Comcast in June 2008), and Lifelock (lead investors include Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers). and Tweetdeck (purchased by Twitter in June 2011).

Technical Review 128

Technical Review Technology North Carolina Switzerland 128

View from Seed

JANUARY 11, 2021

The majority had dedicated more time to guiding the portfolio companies through the pandemic. . The idea that CEOs must have charisma can lead investors to overlook promising candidates, and to consider others unsuited for the role.

Venture Capital 350

Venture Capital Cofounder Early Stage Seed Stage 350

www.xconomy.com

JUNE 9, 2012

“The last thing you wanted was any more VCs like that,” says Coats, who began thinking that what lead VCs and entrepreneurs really want was additional venture investors whose participation would be less complicated—more like a co-investor—and who could decide on joining in a deal in a week or two.

San Diego 40

San Diego Venture Capital Technical Review San Francisco 40

View from Seed

DECEMBER 6, 2018

Some Series A are very active at the seed stage, with a lot of Series A rounds they lead coming from their seed portfolio (True Ventures and Accomplice are good examples of this). The bottom line is that founders have to understand potential seed and Series A investors. When “Too Early” Isn’t a “No”.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Early Stage Differentiation Lead Investor 120

BeyondVC

JULY 7, 2010

We launched an initial prototype, landed a few customers, and brought in Mission Ventures as a new lead investor for the restart of the company. Enter Didera (backed by Hudson Ventures) which had a database clustering solution which would allow us to take our data analytics solutions on to commodity clusters.

Portfolio 109

Portfolio Open Source Architecture Database 109

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

“Steve, we thought we’d tell you this before the board meeting, but both our firms are going to pass on leading your next round.” I felt like I had just been kicked in the gut and stabbed in the back These were my lead investors. Their fiduciary responsibility was to manage a portfolio of investments for their limited partners.

San Francisco 331

San Francisco Silicon Valley Limited Partner Venture Capital 331

BeyondVC

JULY 7, 2010

We launched an initial prototype, landed a few customers, and brought in Mission Ventures as a new lead investor for the restart of the company. Enter Didera (backed by Hudson Ventures) which had a database clustering solution which would allow us to take our data analytics solutions on to commodity clusters.

Portfolio 109

Portfolio Architecture Open Source Database 109

Genuine VC

JULY 10, 2012

There are essentially two distinct basic strategies for startup entrepreneurs to raise a seed round of capital: Subscription approach – An entrepreneur sets a structure (usually a convertible note) and recruits individual angel investors who subscribe to the round, all without a term-driving lead investor.

Syndicate 207

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Portfolio 207

View from Seed

OCTOBER 22, 2015

VCs are legitimately busy with partner meetings, portfolio board meetings, travel, and other stuff, but if a first meeting doesn’t proceed to a second or some initial diligence within about a week or so, odds are you won’t ultimately end up with a commitment from that firm. The ultimate reference is through a portfolio founder.

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Due Diligence Seed Stage Seed Capital 120

Hunter Walker

APRIL 20, 2018

Like we do at the seed stage, USV almost always plays the role of “ lead investor.” ” And later: “The truth about these situations is a few seed investors will massively over deliver and the rest will massively disappoint.” But it often is not.”

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Lead Investor Portfolio Reputation 48

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 5, 2011

We’re almost always the lead investor and usually the most active, too. We didn’t want this section to be our recommendations but those of our portfolio. Look more modern than our previous website, which had a very 2000 feel to it. Demonstrate the deep relationships we have with the CEO’s with whom we work. Thanks, guys.

Early Stage 260

Early Stage Lead Investor Portfolio Partner 260

ithacaVC

FEBRUARY 27, 2014

For example, “VC will serve as the lead investor up to $400,000; Company would source balance of the round up to $600,000 (so round size would be up to $1,000,000 in the aggregate).”. At the early stage, the founding team often has lots of “interest” lined up waiting for a lead.

Term Sheet 71

Term Sheet Aggregator Lead Investor Early Stage 71

Babbling VC

DECEMBER 5, 2010

Technically, co-investors would fall under the "People" heading above but here I'm focussing more on the funds themselves and not specific partners or people at that fund. . I had a business in the portfolio doing fairly well. My fund at that time was only investing as a side-investor. We never led rounds.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Europe Portfolio Germany 76

View from Seed

OCTOBER 21, 2014

Using NextView as an example, since we both seek to lead the seed round and only lead during this round, I’ve seen this trend manifest in one of two ways: In a priced round, the entrepreneur will often share their valuation ask (or a stated floor) for the pre-money valuation of their company much sooner in the process.

Valuation 336

Valuation Founder Seed Stage Angel Investor 336

www.readwriteweb.com

MARCH 7, 2011

Instead of investors holding onto proprietary connections and introductions for their portfolio companies, these relationships are being displaced by the dominate social networks ( Facebook , Linkedin , Quora ). Most indices are cap-weighted - more in line with a concentrated portfolio (i.e. AngelList is a community.

Technical Review 50

Technical Review Due Diligence Startup Angel Investor 50

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

In the future, angel rounds will less often be for specific amountsor have a lead investor. forstartups was to find one angel to act as the lead investor. Youdnegotiate a round size and valuation with the lead, whod supplysome but not all of the money. Then the startup and the lead wouldcooperate to find the rest.

Startup 93

Startup Valuation Non-Compete Deal Flow 93

Rob Go

JULY 17, 2014

1) How is the portfolio performing? On performance, we are happy with how things are shaping up in our early NextView I portfolio. As a result, we have been able to return a nice chunk of the first fund, with many of our most promising portfolio companies still in play and progressing rapidly. This leads to the second factor.

Seed Stage 69

Seed Stage Early Stage Due Diligence Liquidity Event 69

Feld Thoughts

JULY 28, 2014

When I first heard about VC firms in the late 1980s, and my first company (Feld Technologies) started writing portfolio management software for some Boston-based VC firms, many of them had funds with SBIC leverage, although even by the late 1980s this was changing and many of them had shifted away from the SBIC. .”

SBIC 142

SBIC Venture Capital Colorado SBA 142

David Teten

JULY 12, 2017

When I meet with other VCs, family offices, and other institutional investors, the most common question I get is: “What are the highest-potential companies in your portfolio which are raising now?” If I can reduce a portfolio company’s time burden, I create value for them. Fundraising is burdensome.

Syndicate 60

Syndicate Syndication Institutional Investors LP 60

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 10, 2022

In industry terms, I’d call this a “miss/loss,” which VCs tend to not write about for obvious reasons (I’ve got a whole other rant on the fake performative anti-portfolio lists — Bessemer’s aside). The needs of the lead investor for ownership? Is it driven by size of round you want to raise?

Cofounder 89

Cofounder Founder Acquisition Startup 89

Austin Startup

MARCH 4, 2019

Steve Kelly, Lead Investor; Godfrey Nazareth, President & CEO; and Matthew Maltese PhD, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer The Forrest Four-Cast: March 3, 2019 Fifty diverse startups will aim to impress a panel of judges and a live audience with their skills, creativity and innovation at SXSW Pitch Presented by Cyndx.

Startup 79

Startup Philadelphia Cofounder Distribution 79

David Teten

JUNE 12, 2014

Following a lead investor is valuable education, as it gives the coinvestors access to the deal documents and some of the process used by the lead. To date, 11 companies have been approved for Fast Track, and 8 have raised capital from our members. 2) Intellectual ambition. 3) Internationalization.

New York 114

New York Connecticut Angel Groups Florida 114

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

If you’re raising a round where a new lead investor would invest $5 million the VC fund must have no less than $100 million and if you’re looking for them to write $15–20 million as the lead their fund realistically should be at least $400 million. This is a sales process and your job is to look for “buying signals”?—?remember:

Term Sheet 332

Term Sheet Due Diligence Campaign Sales 332

ithacaVC

NOVEMBER 14, 2014

In a world where only the 1000x companies make back portfolios, this is really important. [2] For some investors, this is the most important attribute and they won’t invest unless it’s a huge market. The valuation only exists if investors validate it. Here are some ways to value your company: 1. Market size. Upside risk. [3]

Valuation 69

Valuation Startup Down Round Early Stage 69